What the hell is happening?

I don't want to alarm you, but the natural order of things has been uprooted. In a realization that people like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman are rotten fuckers who should be left on a hill to be tormented by vultures, Harry Reid has been negotiating with the last two moderately sane Republicans, the ones from Maine, in order to get them on board for health care. I know you just grimaced right now, thinking about what further concessions will be made. But that's where it gets weird. Not only is Susan Collins offering up proposed changes to the bill in order to get her support, most of the changes....make the bill better. You're fucking with the natural order of things, Collins!

Collins met Monday with White House health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle and Health and Human Services health reform director Jeanne Lambrew. The senator said she put several amendment requests on the table: raising the penalty on hospitals with high rates of hospital-acquired infections, changing the small business tax credit to prevent it from discouraging hiring and increasing wages and boosting the affordability of insurance.

My God, all of these things are largely good ideas on the merits that would expand the reach of reform. Does she not understand how "getting support" works? It's by making the bill worse. Hello? Plus, both Collins and Snowe are quite the pro-choice advocates and Ben Nelson's recent pledge to out-Stupak the House bill might further bring them aboard in a bid to, you know, protect things they actually believe in.

My world is spinning and I feel dizzy. I have to go sit down. It's just....using swing vote power to improve health care access for Americans and protect women's rights? In the Senate? I think the sun is going to explode any second now.